Simon Calder: The Man Who Pays His Way

Ten summers ago, he or she who booked last, laughed longest - usually fuelled by plenty of cheap retsina. The long, hot summer of 1995 was when the travel industry got it spectacularly wrong. After a reasonable season the year before, tour operators had piled on capacity, hoping to cash in on the hunger for travel. In those days Thomson and Airtours were battling for market share, rather than anything so dull and conventional as making a decent living, so they were prepared to sell at below cost to boost numbers - even in peak season, which is when holiday companies need to earn big profits to compensate for losses during the rest of the year.

Add in a herd of smaller but equally lemming-like tour operators, and the brutal fact that the unsold package holiday is the most perishable of commodities, and you had a recipe for one-week holidays in the Greek islands for under £100.

In the past decade there have been occasional good summers for consumers, such as 2002 - when Airtours apparently did not reason it was dramatically undercutting the market and losing cash on many holidays. But this summer, supply and demand are roughly in balance - which is why you will find relatively few bargains on mainstream package holidays, at least until the last week of August. The cheap deals that are around will mostly be filling up the odd tranche of empty seats here, some low-grade self-catering accommodation there.

Yet this could be the best summer yet for last-minute holidays, because there are now so many players in the market: the no-frills airlines and hotel-bed brokers; "dynamic package" providers and specialist holiday companies offering bespoke deals to up-and-coming destinations; and innovative new ferry firms. Sure, if you have your heart set on a particular four-star hotel in Mallorca or Mykonos, it probably sold out months ago. But as our writers have discovered in the Complete Guide to Last-Minute Holidays (pages 18-21), there is plenty on offer from the Azores to the Greek island of Zante. A late-notice holiday in the latter will now cost you a little over £300. But the retsina is as cheap and nasty as it was in 1995.

ONE PLACE that is unlikely to enjoy a tourism bonanza this year is Africa's most populous country - even though the Bradt Travel Guide to Nigeria (£15.99) has just arrived. The author of this brave new guidebook, Lizzie Williams, does not seek to over-sell the destination: "Nothing works and everything is seriously dilapidated" in this country with "a history of despot military dictators, and corruption at all levels of society".

I have not yet visited Nigeria, but the guidebook offers some enticements - such as the Protea Ranch, on the Oshie Ridge at the base of the Sonkwala Mountains. And I look forward to the bare-hand fishing at the Argungu Fishing Festival.

Getting around could be a challenge, given the power complex of the average local motorist "whether he is on the wrong side of the road and a truck is heading down a hill towards him, or whether he wants to get from point A to point B via an embankment, a pavement or a central reservation".

Most guidebooks ask for reader feedback for new cafés and so on. But Ms Williams pleads: "If you feel an increasingly dilapidated sight is no longer worth the effort of getting there, I want to know." More positively, do tell her "If the tourist office suddenly decides to print brochures for visitors, or if the National Parks office decides to count how many animals are left in Nigeria's parks."

* At least Nigeria is getting easier to reach. Two weeks ago, Sir Richard Branson launched his latest venture, Virgin Nigeria. It links Lagos with Heathrow, providing Nigeria's biggest city with the prospect of high-quality, low-cost air travel. One online travel newsletter excitedly reported the news from Lagos, explaining the ownership structure: 51 per cent belongs to Nigerian investors, with the remaining 49 per cent in the hands of "Charles Bronson".

Sir Richard is 54. The star of Death Wish died two years ago, aged 81.